** A tax credit of up to $7,500 could be used to defray the cost of an electric vehicle under the Inflation Reduction Act now moving toward final approval in Congress. But the auto industry is warning that the vast majority of EV purchases won’t qualify for a tax credit that large.
** The landmark climate legislation passed by the Senate after months of wrangling and weakening by fossil-fuel friendly Democrats will lead to more harm than good, according to frontline community groups who are calling on Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
** BPX Energy expects to be a vastly different company by 2030. The Denver-based oil and gas producer zooms toward the energy transition with a resilient but diminished hydrocarbon business as parent company BP Plc expands into solar, wind and other sources of energy, President Jack Collins said during EnerCom’s oil and gas conference on Aug. 8.
** At least one senior Cuban government official has expressed frustration over the lack of support offered by the United States to help extinguish a deadly fire that began Friday at a large oil storage facility in Matanzas, causing several explosions and sending a toxic cloud of smoke that has spread more than 65 miles.
** Elon Musk offloaded $6.9 billion worth of stock in Tesla Inc., saying he wanted to avoid a sudden sale in the event he’s forced to go ahead with his deal to acquire Twitter Inc.
** Shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp. rallied 3.6% in afternoon trading Tuesday, enough to pace the S&P 500’s energy sector gainers, after the oil and natural gas company disclosed that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. boosted its stake in Occidental to more than 20%.
World
** Ukraine has suspended Russian oil pipeline flows to parts of central Europe since early this month because Western sanctions prevented it from accepting transit fees from Moscow, Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft said on Tuesday.
** Russian oil flows halted to parts of Europe should resume after Hungarian group MOL paid transit fees owed to Ukraine, officials and a minister said, providing a temporary solution to the latest disruption of Russian energy supplies.
** Major energy traders are taking hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as they scramble to plug a liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply gap after several outages hampered efforts to fill European storage ahead of the winter heating season.
** India’s top gas importer Petronet LNG has pushed back plans for a 1 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) liquefied natural gas (LNG) import deal after a surge in global prices, its head of finance Vinod Kumar Mishra said.
** Speculation that a new Iran nuclear deal could soon be agreed upon has added downward pressure to oil prices, although the disruption of Russian oil flows to Central Europe is adding to supply worries reported Oilprice.com.
** The Rhine River is set to become virtually impassable at a key waypoint in Germany, as shallow water chokes off shipments of energy products and other industrial commodities along one of Europe’s most important waterways.
** Nigeria’s petroleum regulator said on Tuesday it stood by its refusal to approve Exxon Mobil’s $1.28 billion sale of shares in its Nigerian unit to Seplat after President Muhammadu Buhari approved the transaction.
** India took another step toward meeting its climate goals Tuesday when lawmakers in parliament’s lower house approved legislation that would require greater use of renewable energy and force industrial polluters to pay a price for the carbon they emit.
** French power stations are reportedly being allowed to break environmental rules to stay open, per Bloomberg. The waiver is in place until September and will potentially breach national environmental standards. Europe’s prolonged hot weather is putting a further strain on energy supplies.
